I can come up with great ideas, but I can't find a story within the ideas. I can't find a protagonist and an antagonist, the two characters you need for conflict. I look all over the place, but no one comes to the foreground. So I seem to be sitting here with all of these seemingly great ideas but with no one to tell a story about.

Ask things like

Who is suffering the most from this situation?

What could go wrong?

What kind of person would try to do something about the problem?

What would he or she try?

Why wouldn't it work?

And so on. Your protagonist is someone who is at best uncomfortable with a situation and tries to make "adjustments" and at worst is experiencing life-or-death urgency from a situation (and the worse, the better, for a compelling story).

Your antagonist is someone who has goals that are counter to whatever the protagonist needs to do so survive/succeed. They may be good goals, or they may be evil goals.

Thank you very much for the suggestions. Funny, I knew all about OSC's "1000 Ideas in an Hour" workshop and it never occurred to me to try that out. One of my ideas has really taken off just by asking these questions in a superficial way. I can't wait to really sit down and go for it.

But if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to ask another question about character and story. It doesn't always seem that the central characters are the one's who suffer most. Take, for example, To Kill a Mockingbird.

The main character is Scout Finch. But the character who suffers most is, arguably, Tom Robinson -- the black man who is sent to prison for raping a white girl (something he didn't do). Next to Tom Robinson, Atticus Finch suffers the most: both his town and his family are against him. Scout seems to hardly suffer at all, or at least she doesn't suffer in the same way Tom and Atticus does.

Why, then, did Harper Lee pick to write the story from Scout's perspective? She doesn't seem to be the protagonist (Atticus does), and she's definitively not the antagonist (Bob Ewell is). So how does she fit into the story?

By the way, Fitzgerald seems to do the same thing in The Great Gatsby.

One key element of this formula, however, is that the reader must sympathize with the POV character. If that character is too different from the audience, this will be difficult. To Kill a Mockingbird isn't written to a Southern Black Male audience (or even to the Atticus Finches of the South). I know that's a bit shallow artistically, but when your aim is to reach a particular audience, you have to at least consider making your POV character in their image.

Fitzgerald isn't trying to accomplish anything particular with Nick except to have an observant, dispassionate, available POV to honestly look at the drama from the outside. Everyone else in the story has an axe to grind (and none of them have the whole story--except maybe Daisy), so they can't be reliable narrators. That's really all Fitzgerald is looking for from Nick (I don't even know if I'm getting the names right here).

While the most common method is to identify the POV character as the protagonist, particuarly in modern writing where Third Person Limited (Omniscient) is common, there can be important reasons not to do so. If the true hero of the story is killed before the end of the story, for instance, you cannot use that POV. That seems like a silly reason, but it isn't a minor one. Also, if the hero character is so heroic that we have difficulty identifying ourselves with that character, then you need to use a less heroic character that observes the heroism of the hero character. Also, you might want to use a dispassionate observer character to avoid distorting the story you want to tell. There are other reasons that you might not identify the main protagonist with the POV character, but these came to mind based on your examples.

Now having said all of that, there are a number of reasons to make sure that your protagonist is the POV character. First, if you choose a hero that the reader can sympathize with, then the audience can imagine the story happening to them. Generating sympathy with the protagonist is generally easier because we all want to identify with the hero of the story. If you try to have a hero that is too much more heroic than the audience can believe themselves, then they might not believe it in your hero either. And so on.

That's why my advice is to take your idea, and imagine yourself in there somewhere. Change the questions just a little.

How might this situation cause me to suffer?

What could go wrong from my perspective?

What would I try to do about the problem?

Why wouldn't it work?

That last question becomes the most difficult, and the most important, in this method. So really work to answer it, ask other people (experts, even) why your efforts would fail, or what unintended consequences they might have. The big advantage of this method is that the POV/protagonist character will be a real person (assuming that you're pretty honest about answering the questions). The disadvantage is that it is quite limiting.

And if you are a particularly strange person, you might end up with a genuinely unbelievable character

This discussion reminds me of something I read elsewhere on this board in a topic that was posted many, many moons ago. (I've read through a lot of the older posts.)

The idea talked about was the Everyman character. A lot of the conversation focused on Tolkien's LOTR. A point was made that as soon as a character transcended the Everyman character, Tolkien never used that character as his point of view character. Two examples. (1) After Aragon finally accepts his role as the King, we experience their travels through the Path of the Dead and beyond from Gimli's point of view. (2) As Sam and Frodo draw closer to Mount Doom, we see things more and more from Sam's point of view. In fact, once Frodo crosses over into Mordor, I don't remember ever being in his shoes again.

But more important than all that are your questions:

How might this situation cause me to suffer?

What could go wrong from my perspective?

What would I try to do about the problem?

Those questions would certainly force to at least begin developing an Everyman character. Thanks for the insight.

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How might this situation cause me to suffer?
What could go wrong from my perspective?
What would I try to do about the problem?

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But if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to ask another question about character and story. It doesn't always seem that the central characters are the one's who suffer most. Take, for example, To Kill a Mockingbird.

The main character is Scout Finch. But the character who suffers most is, arguably, Tom Robinson -- the black man who is sent to prison for raping a white girl (something he didn't do). Next to Tom Robinson, Atticus Finch suffers the most: both his town and his family are against him. Scout seems to hardly suffer at all, or at least she doesn't suffer in the same way Tom and Atticus does.

Why, then, did Harper Lee pick to write the story from Scout's perspective? She doesn't seem to be the protagonist (Atticus does), and she's definitively not the antagonist (Bob Ewell is). So how does she fit into the story?

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You said it yourself. Scout is the main character, but her father is the protagonist. Occasionally, the main character and protagonist can be two separate people. When this happens, the protagonist is the guy we hope will succeed, but it is the main character whose viewpoint and internal conflict we follow most closely. In this novel, the author did this very deliberately. Scout was cought up in all of the goings on, but not truly part of them-- between that and the fact that she was a kid, she could look at everything from a fresh, unbiased point of view; which is exactly what the author needed to tell that story well. Her father might have been hurting more than she was, but he was far too close to the story to see it the way the author wanted to present it. The same goes with Robinson. It's yet another case of a writer making a risky choice for the sake of the story. If this book had been written from another point of view, it wouldn't have been the same story at all.

As others have said, the point of view character does not have to be the character that the story is about. Consider the Sherlock Holmes stories as another example. They are definitely not about Watson.

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD is not about Scout, nor is THE GREAT GATSBY about Nick. They are like the Everyman characters I talked about--they are the characters through whom the reader watches the great and momentous events of the story unfold.

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One of the things they do is allow the reader to participate in great trials, great suffering, great romance, great adventure, and so on, without experiencing it quite as deeply as the main characters do. And when a writer wants to keep those main characters a little larger than life, a little special, a little mysterious, an everyman character is exactly the right choice for the point of view.

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That is a really good point!!!!! Thanks

the antagonist is the one who forces the change

the villian is someone else entirely

Seriously, in certain situations, I only want to share a little with the reader. For one reason, the character may not be thinking specifically about what they are doing or why, it's just part of their normal (to them) activities. I DO explain later in the book why this is...just not in the scene at hand. It is a little cookie for the careful reader, who later after reading the explanation can think back and say, "Ah!" If everything is given away in every scene by revealing all thoughts, i.e., "Won't he be surprised when he realizes that my magic lasso that I have just thrown over him will make him confess!", then where is the surprise, the mystery, the impetus to read more?

I like Third Person Limited, with plunges into full Omniscience further on as called for in the story. If I am just being dense about POV, let me know. I'm open to advice.

We see George (and everything) through the viewpoint characters eyes – Marty – his son. Yes I agree Marty is the lead but not necessarily the protagonist – yet (in the following stories, he fights his own flaw and wins).

Marty loves his dad but he doesn’t respect him or understand why his dad doesn’t fight back. George doesn’t understand why Marty wants/invites confrontation.

George hates confrontation so much that he won’t fight back no matter what Biffs does to him – and thus lets Biff abuse/lambast him in so many ways. Doing his homework, buffing his car, taking his food, knocking on his head, etc. This is George’s major flaw. He even tells Marty, “I’m just not very good at confrontations.”

So what happens during the course of the story – to crack George open – and make him no longer fear confrontation? First he meets Marty during his high school years. Marty encourages him to take a stand (antagonist) against Biff. And in so doing so Biff’s eyes turn to him too. But Biff doesn’t stop making life miserable for George. Marty encourages his sci fi writing also. Turning pt: Marty dresses up as an alien and tells George he must ask Lorraine to the dance. (This alters George’s life – thus a turning point).

Biff kicks Marty out of the car and starts messing with Lorraine, It takes this final turning point (after multiple turning pts) for George to gather enough courage to smack Biff in the face and gain some self respect.

He knows he needs to do it, he knows it’s the right thing to do, and then he finally takes action – and changes a major weakness in his character – this is also the climax of the movie IHMO – then he is rewarded with a kiss and his whole entire life is altered forever as is Martys.

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I only want to share a little with the reader. It is a little cookie for the careful reader, who later after reading the explanation can think back and say, "Ah!" If everything is given away in every scene by revealing all thoughts...then where is the surprise, the mystery, the impetus to read more?

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I agree, and to me this is no different than some well-handled cliff-hangers. I just read The Icarus Hunt, which is in first person, and still Zahn doesn't give away all that the main character thinks. At the end there's an "Ah" that puts the world in proper order again, and in between there are hints that he's onto some other things, but you don't know what till the next chapter or so. Cookie, cliff-hanger--they both provide "surprise, mystery and an impetus to read more."

The problem with cheating on a POV, any POV, is that you are basically undermining the entire reason for writing in POV. If the POV character is aware of things when the reader is not, then it becomes difficult for the reader to understand the actions (and other thoughts and motives) of the POV character. That means that it is more difficult for the reader to feel sympathy for and identification with the POV character.

Worse, it raises the issue of the unreliable narrator. If the POV is allowed to withhold critical information from the reader (the way that first person narrators are often expected to do) for dramatic effect, then the reader cannot be confident that other information hasn't also been withheld for other reasons. For instance, if the POV character is allowed to know how to defeat the villian without that information being passed transparently to the reader, then the POV character might also know why the villian hates the POV character without passing that information to the reader. Particularly, the POV character might be such a slimeball that the rest of us would root for the villian if we only knew.

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That means that it is more difficult for the reader to feel sympathy for and identification with the POV character.

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I have no problems here, and it's more logical to assume I'm one of many rather than some aberration among the readership. In The Icarus Hunt, the fact behind the big "Ah" at the end could have caused loss of reader sympathy and identification by the reader not knowing it, but Zahn's skillful weaving of the action (Here, actions spoke louder than {the abscence of} words. ) and the thoughts he did allow us, including the POV character's impressions of the others, prevented it. In fact, it made the story the richer and more satisfying at the end.

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Worse, it raises the issue of the unreliable narrator. If the POV is allowed to withhold critical information from the reader (the way that first person narrators are often expected to do) for dramatic effect, then the reader cannot be confident that other information hasn't also been withheld for other reasons.

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First off, other than the "Ah" thing, the withholding is not being done on every page, in every chapter. It is not overdone. And because the "Ah" comes at the end, the reader isn't even aware something is being withheld, so he has no reason to think of the POV character as unreliable.

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(the way that first person narrators are often expected to do)

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If that's the case, then this discussion is moot.

[This message has been edited by Kolona (edited September 16, 2002).]

[This message has been edited by Kolona (edited September 16, 2002).]

[This message has been edited by Kolona (edited September 16, 2002).]

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I just read The Icarus Hunt, which is in first person, and still Zahn doesn't give away all that the main character thinks. At the end there's an "Ah" that puts the world in proper order again, and in between there are hints that he's onto some other things, but you don't know what till the next chapter or so.

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I haven’t read The Icarus Hunt, so I’m talking in generalities here, but if a trick/surprise/”Ah” ending come about because of critical information that the POV character knew all along but withheld, I’m going to be miffed when I get to the ending. That would make for an ending that comes out of left field, which isn’t the kind of surprise I want when I get to the end. Seems almost like Deux Machina territory.

Try reading a book where the main character withholds everything he knows. I tried reading The Maltese Falcon. It’s written in the ultimate thought hiding POV – Third Objective – while still trying to work things so it was not the obvious internal actions going on. I had to put it down because I couldn’t stand it – everything Sam Spade did was starting to seem irrational because of the withheld information. Since it’s a classic, obviously other people feel differently about it than I did, but all I can say is, “Argh!” <thud as book hits wall>

I do understand what you mean about well-handled restriction of information. I’ve seen first person books hide things. Such as the characters putting together a plan of action, but the reader doesn’t see this plan laid out. But the reader knows there is a plan and the situation inspiring the plan, so while the actual plan itself is a surprise, the reader is prepared for it just the same. The surprise is kept intact while staying out of left-field territory. But to not have a clear picture (as far as the character can see) of the situation inspiring the plan and at least a hint of where they might be going with it would be cheating. That puts the reader in the position of not understanding why the character is doing what he is doing.

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if a trick/surprise/”Ah” ending come about because of critical information that the POV character knew all along but withheld, I’m going to be miffed when I get to the ending.

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The "Ah" at the end was not a plot point but a character point. I don't want to ruin the book for anyone, but I doubt it would cause anyone to throw the book against a wall.

It occurred to me that mystery writers (and others) put out red herrings all the time, which would be a deliberate misleading. Again, I think it all comes down to the whole package--the way all the elements in the story work together, which means the skill of the author.

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Try reading a book where the main character withholds everything he knows.

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That is definitely not what is going on in Zahn's book. I haven't read The Maltese Falcon, but if that's the way it's written, I don't think I'd care for it. And yet, we have to recognize that that book has been well received.

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Such as the characters putting together a plan of action, but the reader doesn’t see this plan laid out. But the reader knows there is a plan and the situation inspiring the plan, so while the actual plan itself is a surprise, the reader is prepared for it just the same. The surprise is kept intact while staying out of left-field territory.

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Yes, that is it exactly.

I use a slightly different method to break things down so that they make sense.

Protagonist = the person we're hoping will win. In this case, Marty.

Antagonist = the person who most directly opposes the protagonist. In this case, Biff.

Main Character = the person whose internal conflict we follow most closely. In this case, George.

Obstacle Character = the person who directly opposes the main character, trying to force them off of their chosen path (for good or ill, depending on the story). In this case, Marty.

The protagonist and main character are almost always the same person in stories, which is why people tend to be thrown for a loop when that isn't the case. This is one of the few stories I've seen where the protagonist is also the obstacle character.

In many stories, the main character must change to triumph in the story. But in many others, the main character /must/ stay constant to their own ways, no matter how much adversity they face. There are many examples of this. Disney's Mulan (which is currently being watched by my children), is a good one. Mulan's fundamental personality doesn't fit into her society, and that is what allows her to become a hero. If she had become the perfect example of feminity, she never would have been able to save China from the Huns.

In stories where the main character must change, the obstacle character generally a good influence. In stories where the main character must stay the same, the obstacle character is a bad one.

so basically he is the antagonist

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Main Character = the person whose internal conflict we follow most closely. In this case, George.
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so basically he is the protagonist

In fact, I think there are some stories that don't really have a protagonist, especially if the protagonist is defined as a character that changes. (I like your distinction between stories in which a character must change and those in which a character must stand firm, by the way.)

In the Sherlock Holmes stories (and perhaps is most mystery short stories), there really isn't a character who changes. These mystery stories really aren't about life-changing happenings per se. The client, in some cases, may be changed, but not in such a way as to affect the reader (one of the reasons for character change, after all).

Holmes, of course, is the main character in those stories, and Watson is the point-of-view character.

The splitting up of internal conflict and external conflict between characters may be running the risk of oversimplification, though.

On a superficial level, Aragorn (in LORD OF THE RINGS) could be argued to be the main character who deals with external conflict and Frodo the main character who deals with internal conflict. And yet, Aragorn, until he decides to accept his fate as the King, has quite a bit of internal conflict as well.

Of course, once he accepts that fate, Tolkien never lets us inside Aragorn's head again, and we are only able to guess at any internal conflicts he may suffer.

Anyway, please continue. I suspect that there are more ways to look at point-of-view and main characters, protagonists and antagonists, and so on, than there are points of view.

{disclaimer}These definitions may be used or not used as anyone sees fit; I simply find them helpful in my own codification of the works I study.{/disclaimer}

Protagonist: The person in the story who the reader wants to win. Whatever struggle this character is dealing with is the most visible external struggle in the story.

Main Character: The person in the story whose internal struggle is followed most closely.

The Main Character and Protagonist are often the same person, but not always.

The Main Character must either change through the course of the story, or remain the same despite adversity, in order to resolve his struggle successfully. It can be one or the other. In some stories, this struggle is barely hinted at or not even present.

The Protagonist (along with every other character) can of course have internal struggles as well. But in this character's case, unless he is /also/ the Main Character, the internal struggle is never as important as what his actions are, how he affects that most visible external struggle.

Obstacle Character: The character who causes the Main Character to reconsider his own thoughts and actions. This is almost never the Antagonist. It is most often a Mentor or Confidante. Multiple characters can sometimes fill this role over the course of a story.

Antagonist: The character who directly opposes the protagonist through the primary struggle in the story. Sometimes Antagonists can even be ideas or forces of nature; they don't always have to be actual characters.

I got these definitions originally from a writing program called Dramatica Pro. I do not use the program anymore, because it emphasizes codification to a rediculous degree, and utterly squelches the creative process. But it did have some remarkably good ideas on character archetypes.

Any questions?

I'm not sure that your definition of "Obstacle Character" and "Main Character" are quite as universal as "Protagonist" and "Antagonist". It seems to me that all human dramatic narratives (and arguably all dramatic narratives as such) have both protagonist and antagonist, whereas your "Main Character" and "Obstacle Character" both seem like less universal elements of dramatic structure (along the lines of foils, romantic leads, archtypes, and so forth, none of which must occur in any particular narrative). I personally would have defined George, for example, as a plastic Everyman symbolically representing the time line itself.

As OSC pointed out in the workshop he ran after EnderCon, one of the great strengths of written stories is that they can put the reader into the characters' heads and show readers what the characters' motivation and internal conflict is.

Movies may try to do that with voice over (which can be terribly hokey), or with what a character says (which may not be the truth), but they certainly don't do internal stuff as well as written works do.